TRANSCRIPT: ABC News/Facebook/WMUR Democratic Debate

And in the last 18 months, U.S. officials say his Al Qaida has
regrouped using safe havens along the Pakistani border to train and
dispatch hundreds of new recruits.

ROSS: And just as troubling, amidst all the turmoil in Pakistan,
the influence of bin Laden continues to grow there, a country with
many nuclear weapons.

Charlie?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GIBSON: Brian Ross there.

Well, Osama bin Laden, as he pointed out, has said it is his duty
to try to get nuclear weapons. Al Qaida has been reconstituted and
re-energized in the western part of Pakistan.

And so my general question is, how aggressively would you go
after Al Qaida leadership there?

And let me start with you, Senator Obama, because it was you who
said in your foreign policy speech that you would go into western
Pakistan if you had actionable intelligence to go after it, whether or
not the Pakistani government agreed. Do you stand by that?

OBAMA: I absolutely do stand by it, Charlie. What I said was
that we should do everything in our power to push and cooperate with
the Pakistani government in taking on Al Qaida, which is now based in
northwest Pakistan. And what we know from our national intelligence
estimates is that Al Qaida is stronger now than at any time since
2001.

OBAMA: And so, back in August, I said we should work with the
Pakistani government, first of all to encourage democracy in Pakistan
so you've got a legitimate government that we're working with, and
secondly that we have to press them to do more to take on Al Qaida in
their territory.

What I said was, if they could not or would not do so, and we had
actionable intelligence, then I would strike.

And I should add that Lee Hamilton and Tom Keaton, the heads of
the 9/11 Commission, a few months later wrote an editorial saying the
exact same thing.

I think it's indisputable that that should be our course.

Let me just add one thing, though. On the broader issue of
nuclear proliferation, this is something that I've worked on since
I've been in the Senate. I worked with Richard Lugar, then the
Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to pass the
next stage of what was Nunn-Lugar so that we would have improved
interdiction of potentially nuclear materials.

OBAMA: And it is important for us to rebuild a nuclear
nonproliferation strategy, something that this administration,
frankly, has ignored, and has made us less safe as a consequence.

It would not cost us that much, for example, and would take about
four years for us to lock down the loose nuclear weapons that are
still floating out there, and we have not done the job.

GIBSON: I'm going to go the others in a moment, but what you
just outlined is essentially the Bush doctrine. We can attack if we
want to, no matter the sovereignty of the Pakistanis.

OBAMA: No, that is not the same thing, because here we have a
situation where Al Qaida, a sworn enemy of the United States, that
killed 3,000 Americans and is currently plotting to do the same, is in
the territory of Pakistan. We know that.

And this is not speculation. This is not a situation where we
anticipate a possible threat in the future.

And my job as commander in chief will be to make sure that we
strike anybody who would do America harm when we have actionable
intelligence do to that.

GIBSON: Senator Edwards, do you agree with him?

EDWARDS: If I as president of the United States know where Osama
bin Laden is, I would go get him, period.